It’s 3.30am. You hear footsteps on the drive. You snap awake with a pounding heart. There is the familiar scrape of the garage door opening. A shadow of an intruder!

What do you do when you live in the country?

Call 111?

You may be beaten to a pulp before they arrive.

Call your neighbours?

If you have already called 111 the police may hold the line open to prevent you from calling your neighbours for help.

Switch the lights on and shout in the hope that the criminals will run away?

Yeah right.

Or would you grab your shotgun, call the neighbours and 111, and then go out to confront the thieving scum?

Current Police advice boils down to this: Do nothing. Take no risks. Don’t try to defend yourself. Try to look at the thieves without offending them and call your insurance company in the morning…if you are still alive to do so.

Most of all they decree: Don’t Take The Law Into your Own Hands.

But the law has always been in our hands. There has never been a time when there could be enough police to protect us all.

The mutual trust and security that was part of our heritage did not come from having enough police to watch every scumbag. It came from ordinary decent people who shared responsibility for upholding behaviour standards and the laws of the land.

They stood up for themselves and for their community, and the law stood up for them.

But not any more.

Now if you defend yourself against criminal invaders the government will force the police to prosecute you. Then the courts will accept the intruders feeble excuses and corrections officials will apologise for upsetting their criminal self esteem.

The state has no right to punish citizens who defend themselves and their property when the state itself cannot or will not do it for them.

I am campaigning for law reform that will protect law abiding citizens from prosecution if they defend themselves.

Parliament is currently thinking about this very issue. You can make your views clear. Right now. Let Parliament know what you think before 8 June and you could help restore the sensible law we had up to 1980.

Click here to learn more about my amendment – http://www.act.org.nz/selfdefence – and to have your say.

I am interested in your experiences with intruders in the night. Send me your anecdotes.